Fiona Jones

Monday 5 February 2007 20.49 EST
First published on Monday 5 February 2007 20.49 EST

Fiona Jones, who has died of alcoholic liver disease aged 49, was MP for Newark from 1997 to 2001, and one of the 129 women pictured in the famous "Blair's babes" photograph which followed Labour's first landslide victory. But she was the last of the class of 97 to make her maiden speech - in January 1998 - and only spoke four times in her first 21 months in the Commons.

She may have had other things on her mind, like her impending trial for electoral fraud, having declared election expenses of £8,514 - already £514 over the local limit of £8,000 for her seat - when £16,000 or more had been spent. She and her agent were sentenced to 100 hours' community service, and she was excluded from the House. Within a month, her conviction was reversed by the appeal court. Back in the Commons, she did not resume her seat on the agriculture select committee and, as colleagues shunned her, she began drinking in the privacy of her flat. She felt bitter at the Labour party "for standing aloof" and the drinking intensified after she lost her seat in 2001.

Jones had a difficult personality, which invited friction. It was originally rumoured that the complaint against her - made by her Liberal Democratic opponent - had originated with Newark "old" Labour councillors who objected to the contribution to her electoral funds from a local property developer.

Born in Liverpool, Jones grew up on a Fazakerley housing estate, the daughter of the Roman Catholic production manager of a local drug company. She was educated at Mary Help of Christians Convent grammar school, Wirral College of Art and Preston College. She then became a freelance journalist and television researcher, through which she met her husband Christopher Jones, a BBC radio journalist. Together, they moved to Lincolnshire.

Her father had been a friend of the Liverpool Walton MP, Eric Heffer (obituary, May 28 1991), who gave the young Fiona a copy of the Edwardian socialist classic, Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Having joined the Labour party at 17, she was elected to West Lindsey district council, Lincolshire, in 1990. She contested hopeless Gainsborough and Horncastle in 1992 and was then selected for Tory Newark, having defeated the local council leader for the Labour nomination. She won the seat by 3,016 votes, overturning an 8,000 Tory majority.

Her suit against the Nottinghamshire police for malicious prosecution was thrown out in December 2005, leaving her with £45,000 in costs. She was found with 15 empty vodka bottles strewn around her. She is survived by her husband and two sons.